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disclaimer: this chapter made me cry and i wrote it. mention of death and details of it.
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As soon as you all walked through the door, Yangyang and Kun got up from the couch. "Why is Yujin here?" Yangyang asked.

You put your coat on the rack, a weak feeling in your forearms. You felt sick to your stomach. "I don't want him to be near Minsu."

Everyone followed you into the kitchen, where you started getting a glass of water. "What happened?" Kun asked.

"We found a dead woman in his basement." Hendery told him. "After Minli shot out the only light in his living room so that she could shoot him and Yujin not see."

You took a drink of your water as Kun gave you a look of surprise. "What? He's a coward that can't even take care of his own situations. If he wants to fight me, he can do it himself."

You sat at the head of the table and tapped the expensive marble of it. "I want Yujin to sit next to me."

And he did, then everyone else followed suit. Ten was to your right, and at the other end of the table across from you, was Xiaojun. You thought it was fitting since he had been pushing the issue since you started living with them.

"What's happening?" Yangyang asked.

"You guys have been asking me why I hate Minsu so much." Your fingers were tracing the glass now. "I never had the energy to talk about it, but now that everyone's so confused about Minsu being a killer, I guess it's a good time to tell you what actually happened to our mom."

Everyone looked at you in anticipation. You could already hear your mother's screams from so many years ago. You started to cover your ears, but Ten caught your wrists.

"Hey," he whispered. "You're in the kitchen, you're with us."

He had seen you do this several times before. You would never tell him why it happened, but he knew that it wasn't pretty for you. He was trying to put you back in the moment, rather than letting you go to wherever your mind was taking you.

"It was my tenth birthday and Minsu and I had Wang Lei over to celebrate..."

"Wang Lei! I can't believe you actually came!" You joyously shouted as you wrapped your arms around your best friend.

"Of course I came, you're my best friend."

"Hey," Minsu cut in. "He was my best friend first, Minli."

"Mom was cutting my cake." You smiled. "She made it herself and even wrote "Happy Birthday, my little angel!" on it. She was cutting it with a big butcher knife, because it was just easier, and then she brought us all a piece of cake."

"Here, my little angel." Your mom gave you a kiss on the forehead. "I can't believe you're already ten. I love you so much."

"I love you, Momma."

"We finished eating our cake and we went outside to play for a little bit. We were playing cops and robbers. Wang Lei and I were the cops and Minsu was the robber." Your friends listened carefully, not wanting to miss a single detail. "Then Minsu asked me if I wanted my gift."

"Yes, I want my gift!" You clapped.

He grinned. "Then come inside."

"We both followed him inside and into the kitchen, where my mom was putting the cake away." Your voice broke at the memory. "She had her back turned and Minsu took the knife off of the cake platter and just..."

"Minsu, no! What are you doing!"

"He just stabbed her, and stabbed her and stabbed her, until she was begging for him to stop and he just - he just wouldn't." You cried. "I was on my knees beside my mother, yelling that I loved her, and that I appreciated everything she's done for me." Tears were soaking your sweater. "And then she was gone."

"Mommy? Mommy, please answer me." You cried. "Mommy!"

"And he wasn't even done." You continued. "He dragged her body out of the back door, and I was tripping over myself to follow him because I couldn't see, because my vision was so blurred..."

"Minsu, what are you doing? What have you done?" You yelled. "Why are you bringing her out here?"

"To set her on fire! I have to get rid of the evidence!"

"He dropped her legs on the ground as if she was some sort of doll. He opened a lighter that he found and set her dress on fire." Your lips shook as you tried to find the words to keep going. "I was panicking, I didn't want her to be gone like that. We had a fire extinguisher in our house, so I got it and came back. I knew that I needed to distract Minsu or something, so I hit him with it and knocked him out."

"How do I work this, Wang Lei? Help me!"

"We were in so much shock. I'm surprised that we finally got it to work."

"Oh my god," Wang Lei whispered. "She's all burnt."

"Half of her body was completely burnt, and I couldn't bury her in my backyard because I wanted her to be in a cemetery." You focused on the water that was shaking in your glass. "I blackmailed someone that worked there to bury my mother in their cemetery for free, at ten years old."

"And you never told the police?" Winwin asked.

You shook your head. "No. No, because I didn't want Minsu behind bars."

"Were you protecting him?" Hendery questioned.

"I knew that if I told the police, Minsu would be in juvenile detention for a long time, and then be put in prison as an adult. He knew what he did, he knew what he was doing." You finally looked them all in the eyes, finding that you weren't the only one crying. "No, I wanted him to be free so that I could kill him myself, so that I could make him suffer the way he made our mom suffer."

"Since nobody ever knew what happened, how did the two of you live after that?" Kun asked.

"I wouldn't call it living. Minsu kept me trapped in the house. I could only go to school, but eventually I stopped caring and did whatever I wanted." Yujin was sobbing quietly, so you grabbed his hand underneath the table. "That's why I told him that he made me like this. He would torment me with the fact that he killed our mom on my birthday. If I had nightmares about it, he would just make it worse and tell me how it felt to stab her."

Xiaojun held his right knee to his chest. "Did you ever ask him why he did it?"

"Every night. He would always tell me that he had dreams of doing it, and that it would have been wrong of him to not fulfill his fate." You closed your eyes. "Mom knew that he wasn't okay. The doctors told her that our fathers more sociopathic genes were passed down to him and that it was changing his behavior. She thought that she could help him and he just turned his back on her and killed her."

The screams in your head got too loud for you to handle, and Ten couldn't stop you from covering your ears. The sound pulsed in between your left and right ear for thirty seconds straight, and then it finally stopped.

WayV and Yujin watched you collect your composure. They weren't sure how you were even doing that after what you just told them. They didn't know how someone who witnessed the murder of their mother, on their birthday, could be so put together.

"I'll show you where your room is, Yujin."

You were done talking, and WayV knew that. You walked off with Yujin and opened the door to the lush guest bedroom.

"Can you stay with me?"

"Yeah," you whispered. "I was going to anyway."

You pulled the covers back for him, and sat on the mattress. He put his head in your lap and you played with his hair.

"I'm sorry I had to be so harsh about the truth."

"Don't be. That's how it went and that's how it needed to be told." Yujin replied. "Why didn't you tell me before?"

You looked down at his side profile. "I was worried that Minsu would do something to you if he found out that you knew."

He nodded in understanding. "You didn't deserve that, Minli."

"I know."

Your voice was low and raspy, a new surge of emotion coming over you. You made sure that he fell asleep before even thinking about crying.

The guys wanted to check on you before going to bed, so they quietly peeked into the guest bedroom to see you with your head against the head board.

You were just crying.

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